21 replies to this topic

[James Carlson]

Leonardo, on 14 March 2010 - 07:55 AM, said:

Hi Mr Hastings.

Re the quote from your post above. Why would anyone assert that Lt. Col. Arneson was lying?

Why do you conclude that what Lt. Col. Arneson says contradicts what Mr Carlson has just posted?

Mr Carlson stated that the Maintenance Team(s) and the Security Team(s) present at the incident did mention UFO's. However, Mr Carlson also stated the context of that conversation was "kidding around".

Nevertheless, UFO's were mentioned, and any monitoring of those conversations would also note and include this.

This does not mean the context was not what Mr Carlson stated it was.

Do you take the fact that a conversation was noted elsewhere to be evidence for the context of that conversation?

Thank you, Leonardo.  You might be interested in knowing as well that the 20th Air Division at Malmstrom AFB that Arneson claims to have been attached to does not now and has never in the past actually existed.  The 20th AD was responsible for the air defense of parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, and all of Illinois. It was primarily attached to Truax AFB, Wisconsin; in December 1967 the 20th AD was reassigned to Fort Lee AFS, Virginia. It has never, throughout its entire history, been attached to Malmstrom AFB.  It's apparent that Robert Hastings has never even attempted to confirm at least one of the "accounts" he has presented.  In addition, for a number of years, Hastings has paraded Col. Figel's testimony as "proof" of UFO interference with the missiles at Malmstrom AFB in March 1967.  This fell apart instantly with a single phone call when Figel confirmed absolutely the entire scenario that I have previously advocated.

James Carlson

[Leonardo]

James Carlson, on 14 March 2010 - 09:04 AM, said:

Thank you, Leonardo.  You might be interested in knowing as well that the 20th Air Division at Malmstrom AFB that Arneson claims to have been attached to does not now and has never in the past actually existed.  The 20th AD was responsible for the air defense of parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, and all of Illinois. It was primarily attached to Truax AFB, Wisconsin; in December 1967 the 20th AD was reassigned to Fort Lee AFS, Virginia. It has never, throughout its entire history, been attached to Malmstrom AFB.  It's apparent that Robert Hastings has never even attempted to confirm at least one of the "accounts" he has presented.  In addition, for a number of years, Hastings has paraded Col. Figel's testimony as "proof" of UFO interference with the missiles at Malmstrom AFB in March 1967.  This fell apart instantly with a single phone call when Figel confirmed absolutely the entire scenario that I have previously advocated.

James Carlson

I appreciate your information, Mr Carlson.

I want to stress that I do not approach this topic with a view that any party is lying, or being intentionally deceitful. The inconsistency you note above could be due to a transcription error or a misunderstanding, rather than any deceit.

Unless there is a way to confirm that Lt. Col. Arneson does not exist, or did not state what Mr Hastings claims, then I cannot presume that Lt. Col. Arneson does not exist, or did not state what Mr Hastings claims. It might even be that this Lt. Col. Arneson is remembering things that happened at different times/locales (and the 'Malmstrom' recollection is incorrect) and concatenating them into one memory. This would not mean that Lt. Col. Arneson did not say what is claimed, but that his recollection of reading the report/message was placed in the wrong locale.

This does not mitigate that Mr Hastings may have read into what Lt. Col. Arneson said, something that was not stated or implied.

If there is no record of a Lt. Col. Arneson being in the US Air Force at the times in question, then that opens up Mr Hastings claim(s) as that he is either misrepresenting the truth, or has been duped himself.

Edited by Leonardo, 14 March 2010 - 09:55 AM.

[Leonardo]

I would like to continue my analysis with your next post, Mr Hastings.

Robert Hastings, on 04 March 2010 - 10:09 PM, said:

From my book UFOs and Nukes:

Regarding the full-flight missile shutdown at Echo Flight, on March 16, 1967, N. Henry “Hank” Barlow told me,

"I arrived at Malmstrom in October 1966 and left in November 1967. I was on Electro-Mechanical Team 24 at the time [the Echo Flight shutdown] happened. We had to go out to Mike-1 for about four or five days. We had to stay out there and cover the sites. The day we were supposed to return [to base,] my team chief called Job Control to see if we could come in because it was really starting to snow. It was really miserable out, windy and all. Job Control said, ‘Yeah, come on in, there’s nothing going on, everything seems okay.’ So we packed up and started back to the base.

Then Job Control called us on the radio and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got a problem here, part of Echo Flight has shut down, so we want you to go to the nearest site.’ I think that was Echo-6, but I’m not sure. Anyway, somewhere around that area. We checked VRSA and there was nothing on it. [That] was a unit in each launch facility, with something like 19 or 20 channels on it. [Actually, VRSA or Voice Reporting Signal Assembly had 23 channels, one for each problem area.] If the missile went down for any reason, or if there was some other problem, Job Control back at Malmstrom would know about it, know what is was, from the kind of signal it sent. But when we got to the site, there was nothing on [VRSA] to indicate the reason for the missile shutting down. That in itself was unusual. I had never seen that before.

So Job Control said, do a start-up, which takes about four hours. After you initiate the startup, you can back out of there and leave because its automatic after a certain point. Usually, if there was nothing else going on, we would stay at the site to make sure everything was working fine. But that night, Job Control said go to the next site, whatever that was. So we did that, and [restarted] three or four missiles before going back to [Echo-1]. Of all ten missiles that went down, only one wouldn’t come back up, but that was due to something that was going to [fail] anyway, like a Logic Coupler Drawer, or something like that. But none of the missiles had anything on VRSA.

[When we got back to Echo-1] we heard what happened. At Echo-2, there was a team in there earlier that afternoon that could not get the security [telemetry] to set-up, through the parabolic antenna or the soft support building or something like that. So, they put an Air Police team out there, in a camper, two guys. Anyway, one of the guys went out to take a leak, and he noticed that it wasn’t snowing over top of his head. The perimeter lights were on and he could see the snow coming down all around him so he looked up and saw a ring of lights right over top of him. He was scared stiff, so he went back to the camper and woke up his team partner.

When this other guy came out, he had a camera with him, which they weren’t suppose to have, but guys would do stuff like that. By then this thing had moved off the perimeter fence and he took pictures of it. [When the security team was debriefed back at the base,] the Air Force confiscated the camera and film. I was told all of this back at Echo-1. We had passed our ‘timelines’ because we had worked 16 hours, or something like that, and could not go back to the base so we had to go back to Echo. [During that era, maintenance teams were left out in the field for four to five days, working a maximum of 16 hours per day—the timeline. If a team got close to reaching that limit, it was sent to the nearest Launch Control Facility for Remain Over Night, or RON status.] When we got back there, there was brass all over the place. They were from Offutt AFB—SAC Headquarters—they had brought them in. There were just a lot of high-ranking officers there."

I asked Barlow who had told him about the incident involving the Camper Alert Team. He responded, “I don’t remember. I don’t know if it was one of the security guys or someone else. I was so tired when we got back to Echo 1. We had worked long hours, we had been out almost a week by that time and we were just pooped. All I remember is that there were lots of people there and there was no place to lie down. But we were told that it was a UFO shutdown—that UFOs had been responsible—and that’s why all those guys were there.”

I asked Barlow if he had been surprised or shocked or skeptical when he was informed that UFOs had shutdown the missiles. He replied,

"Oh no! On many other occasions, we were out at the sites when Job Control called and told us that, you know, there are reports of UFOs in the area, so keep your eyes open. That happened many, many times. And I saw them! I would see a light in the sky and it would make a right-angle turn. Or it would make two different right-angle turns, one after the other. I saw that more than once. They were much faster than a helicopter and we certainly knew that aircraft [couldn’t] do that.

I once saw a light come straight down, hover at maybe 1000-feet, and then shoot straight off [horizontally] and out of sight. It was crazy! Job Control always called us first, before we saw anything. They would call and say, you know, heads-up. Then, most of the time, we would see something a little while later. So, they were getting reports from somewhere, and maybe they had [the UFOs] on radar, but I don’t know for sure. Sometimes, when the call came in, we were down in the missile [silo] and we would talk to the guard topside about what he was seeing. I remember one time, the guard was just a nervous wreck. Job Control had called and said UFOs were sighted in the area. Then, I’m not sure, but I think he saw some lights himself. But anyway, he was just scared out of his wits. He wanted to come down in the silo with us. But the guards weren’t allowed to do that.

One time, [probably during the summer of 1967,] we were at one of the Bravo sites when we got a call from Job Control saying that there were UFO sightings in our area. Then, a short time later, we saw a green light come straight down out of the sky and land on this hill. Then two lights separated from it, straight out to each side. We were sitting in the pick up truck, eating our box lunches, when we saw this, along with another team we were training, plus the guard. We reported it to Job Control. They told us to close up the site and go check that out. We told them that we didn’t think we were qualified to do that! [Laughs] This was around 4 a.m. When it got light, we were amazed how far away the hill was, where this thing had landed. It was far, far away. We thought it was much closer, so the light was really bright.

I asked Barlow if he had later been debriefed about the incident at Echo Flight. He said, “No, never! It was almost kind of a joke, we would all laugh about it. Now, it wasn’t a joke [with all the missiles down] but it was a joke because nobody would believe it if you told them about it.”

I asked Barlow if he had heard about the Oscar Flight missiles shutting down around the same time as the Echo Flight shutdowns. He said “No, I never knew about that...I wasn’t qualified to work there.”

As noted earlier in this thread, retired Boeing engineer Robert Kaminski has confirmed in writing that UFOs had been reported by unspecified "airmen" at Echo Flight during the incident, and that his team had been ordered to suspend its investigation--an unprecidented development--because the full-flight shutdown was being catagorized as a "UFO event."

END OF BOOK EXCERPT

So, James Carlson, rant on. I suppose that Barlow is lying too, right?

--Robert Hastings
http://www.ufohastings.com

There is no reason to suppose in this that Mr Barlow is lying. But what did he actually witness at the site in question?

He was told about the UFO when he returned to Echo 1. So, it stands to reason he, personally, never witnessed anything. Mr Barlow seems earnest, and perhaps he was earnest as well as a young man during this incident.

So, I have to ask, was he simply the victim of some of the others pranking him?

He indicates he was a believer/witness of UFO's on other occasions. If what Mr Carlson says is correct, that the others were not UFO believers, then they may have taken this opportunity to play to Mr Barlow's belief. It would seem consistent with the behaviour explained as observed.

That he further claims "the whole thing [about the UFO(s)] was treated as a joke" seems to corroborate this line of reasoning. To the others it was a joke. To the earnest, and perhaps not so worldly-wise, young Mr Barlow, it was not.

Given this, but more importantly that Mr Barlow never actually witnessed anything, I cannot take this testimony as evidence that the report of a UFO was based on an actual sighting.

Edited by Leonardo, 14 March 2010 - 09:56 AM.

[Leonardo]

I have now read and digested post #10, and would like to comment.

Quote

Generally corroborating statements made by Electro-Mechanical Team member Hank Barlow, Jamison provides unambiguous testimony to the effect that commanders at Malmstrom’s 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron had been fully aware of UFO-involvement in the missile shutdowns...

Having read the post, I can say that this statement is untrue. I am not saying that Mr Hastings is lying, but the comments made by Mr Jamison in no way corroborates that anyone was "aware of UFO involvement in the missile shutdowns".

The statements do suggest that reports of UFO's had caused a state of high alert at various missile sites - perhaps throughout all of Missile Command and possibly a large part of the Air Force. However, apart from "overheard conversation" there are no direct eyewitness reports of any UFO activity in Mr Jamison's account at all. Therefore no-one was aware of any UFO involvement, they were only aware of reports of UFO involvement. An important distinction.

This suggests to me that the initial "joking around" at Echo 1 had been not recognised for what it was to those who reviewed the reports, and so the Air Force, quite rightly, moved to a higher state of alert because of "reports of UFO's at missile sites". Can it be corroborated whether the initial report from Echo 1 was verified as a false alarm, or was it treated as an actual UFO event (within the senior Air Force personnel reviewing the reports, that is)?

Quote

Upon arriving at the hangar, all of the teams were debriefed. Despite the extraordinary nature of the event, Jamison doesn’t recall being told to keep quiet about it. As unusual as it may seem, UFOs were apparently not mentioned.

At the risk of leaving myself open to accusations from the "conspiracy theorists", that there was no mention of UFO's in Mr Jamison's teams debriefing suggests what he had heard was rumor and perhaps people talking of the Echo 1 'incident' which Mr Jamison then took out of context.

As before, we have no eyewitness testimony, and a plausible scenario in which Mr Jamison could be telling the truth as he heard it, but was mistaken in how he put together what he heard. I find in this passage no evidence for there being any UFO activity involving Oscar flight, and no corroborating evidence that there was any UFO activity involving Echo 1.

I am not going to diverge into discussing the other UFO incident mentioned - that being Belt, Montana, March 1967 - as I wish to focus on the incidents involving missile sites.

I will conclude my analysis tomorrow with a review of Mr Hastings' post (#2) reporting the conversation with Col. Figel.

Edited by Leonardo, 14 March 2010 - 07:44 PM.

[Leonardo]

Reading post #2, and the transcript of Mr Hastings discussion with Col. Figel, made me feel uneasy. This is because I either have to suggest the transcript is incorrect, or that Col. Figel was negligent in his duties as a United States military officer.

In this transcript Col. Figel notes that he was informed that a UFO was hovering over a US military missile site, and that this may have some connection with the off-lining of the missiles in that site. This would be considered a hostile action and he should have immediately informed the C.o.C. and instigated an assessment of that threat. Instead he sent the Security and Maintenance Teams to continue checking the launch facility itself - possibly exposing them to this unassessed threat.

I accept that Col. Figel states he initially thought the UFO report was 'kidding around', but the transcript then reads that the report was reiterated to Col. Figel as a factual observation. There is no indication in the transcript that Col. Figel continued to assess this report as a joke, and the context of the transcript in Mr Hastings account as evidence that a UFO was present implicates Col. Figel as being derelict in his duties. I would ask Mr Hastings if he pointed this out to Col. Figel, or if it can be reaffirmed to him, and give Col. Figel the opportunity to restate what Mr Hastings alleges he said?

If we take the fact that no further action was taken by Col. Figel, vis-a-vis reporting further along the C.o.C. the presence of a UFO over a sensitive US military facility, as being that he was actually assured the report of said UFO was, indeed, a joke, then I would ask Mr Hastings why this transcript is included in his evidence for there being a UFO incident at Echo flight?


Regarding the testimony by Mr Kaminski. I am bemused by his reporting no indicators which would suggest how these missiles were offlined. Even if this was done via external means from an alleged UFO, this interference with the missile systems would leave a trace on the recording mechanisms indicating what part of the missile/launch systems were affected.

This is not to say that any energy (or whatever is alleged to have been used by the alleged UFO to effect the shutdown) used by an alleged UFO would be detected, but that energy's effect on the missile systems surely would, therefore why the missiles shutdown should be evident. To be fair to Mr Kaminski, Mr Barlow also states they found no indicators of missile failure when checking on site.

I will state right now, I am not a missile technician, but I do have some passing knowledge of electronics and I know that an analysis of a failed electronic system will show where the failure occurred, and what prompted that failure. Also, Col. Figel stated in his testimony (reported by Mr Hastings) that he reported to the teams onsite that there was a "Channel 9 No-Go". What component of the missile subsystem corresponds with Channel 9 on the VRSA? Even if they found no fault on the subsystem itself, this should have been available to read on the VRSA indicators.

Mr Kaminski's ommission of any material indication of failure in the letter posted by Mr Hastings is not, in itself, evidence the missiles 'failed without cause', but it is cause for concern that his testimony is not complete. I would ask Mr Hastings if Mr Kaminski mentioned in his book the material cause (i.e. what components of the missile systems were affected by the alleged UFO) of the missile shutdowns?

Taking both these testimonies into account, it would seem there is no material evidence for any UFO activity at Echo flight and neither Col. Figel nor Mr Kaminski were eyewitnesses.

So, to conclude based on the three posts of Mr Hastings I have reviewed:

1) There is no eyewitness testimony of a UFO at Echo flight or Oscar flight. All accounts of these incidents are, at best, second-hand, and, imo, those pertaining to Echo flight of dubious nature that the accounts were not meant as a joke.

2) Apart from a heightened state of alert due to UFO reports (again, second-hand at best), the US Air Force doesn't appear to have instigated any special measures to protect missile sites from further intrusion.

3) After the circuitry of the Minuteman missile systems was upgraded following several failures in the late 1960's, no further mass shutdowns of these missiles was reported. This seems to corroborate Mr Carlson's claim that the failures were a result of faulty (or fragile) circuitry and not outside interference. The premise that the US military could 'harden' its missiles against an unknown force that did not leave any trace of its effect on these missiles cannot be entertained.

4) Some of Mr Hastings conclusions about various testimonies are inconsistent with the facts of those testimonies. This is not an indictment of Mr Hastings in that he may be intentional in his inconsistency.

5) We appear to have some controversy over a few material facts pertaining to the incident. Was the 20th Air Division (or part of it) stationed at Malmstrom AFB? Did Col. Figel report to the onsite teams at Echo flight there was a "Channel 9 No-Go" and, if so, why did Mr Barlow, who was on the Maintenance Team, not verify that? Why does Mr Kaminski not recognise the "Channel 9 No-Go" from the VRSA indicator reports?

6) In the testimony pertinent to the Oscar flight shutdown, why was Mr Jamison not questioned as to whether he found (or was appraised of) the cause of the shutdown? All we have in this testimony is a general discussion of UFO rumour.

Hopefully, more information (especially about the questions I ask in conclusions 5 and 6) will shed further light on these incidents, but my initial reading of the information is that there was no UFO sighting, and UFO's were not responsible for, or should be implicated in, the shutting down of missiles in Echo flight or Oscar flight.

Edited by Leonardo, 15 March 2010 - 07:13 PM.

[Eric D. Carlson]

I find it interesting that none of the pro-ufo crowd have contacted me for an interview regarding what happened at Echo Flight.
Eric D. Carlson

[quillius]

I thought I would bring this thread back to life as recent discussions have me very intruiged.

For anyone that followed the heated debate on the (now closed) cheyenne thread will be interested in reading through this thread also.

I personally find it hard to believe that a security team would 'joke' about UFO's at such a serious time, in addition I find the fact that they returned 'scared' and were relieved of duty quite interesting also.

I think this would be a good discussion to continue as long as we can avoid people accusing anyone else of lying and have a sensible debate to try and ascertain what really happened.

I would urge both R. Hastings and J.Carlson to join in the debate to try and settle matters in an amicable fashion.

I would also think it fair to say that whoever decides to make personal attacks and derail (or have thread closed)thread will be loooked upon as doing so on purpose and will raise much doubt on their 'version'.

I would also urge the likes of LS, McGuffin, Leonardo, Boon to get involved as their input and experience, I find is always very valuable in these discussions.